Recent Posts
Welcome to the News section! Here you can find out about all sorts of news related to Land of Opportunity, the people and issues presented in the film, and upcoming events.
RECENT POSTS
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From Katrina to Sandy: New VIDEO Made in Collaboration With Sandy Storyline
As our interactive website continues to evolve (and it's evolving!), we are in the process of forging creative partnerships with like-minded organizations, inviting creative partners to curate and manage their own content. This week we're announcing of one of our most important partnerships: our creative collaboration with New York's Sandy Storyline.
We first teamed up with Sandy Storyline in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Sandy six months ago. Sandy Storyline is a participatory documentary that collects and shares stories about the impact of Hurricane Sandy on neighborhoods, communities and lives. By engaging people in sharing their own experiences and visions, Sandy Storyline, much like LandofOpportunity, is building a community-generated narrative of the storm and its aftermath—a narrative that uses the hard lessons learned from crisis to help build a more equitable future for cities everywhere.
Our goal in partnering with Sandy Storyline echoes what has always been a key aim of the Land of Opportunity project: the sharing of fundamentally diverse stories to increase engagement with the complex issue of urban equity.
This collaboration will be an ongoing exploration of the time-space continuum of disaster recovery and rebuilding in an urban setting, a look at the then-and-now, New Orleans-New York dynamic of reconstruction. How does one set of narratives overlap with the other? What-if anything-have we learned from the ongoing and contentious rebirth of New Orleans? How can those lessons be used to predict, and more importantly change what happens on the ground post-Sandy?
We look forward to working with Sandy Storyline in the future as they contribute rich multimedia content to our upcoming interactive site. Click here to view the introductory teaser video for the partnership, a first production in what we hope will be an enriching and long-lasting creative collaboration.
Tags: Sandy StorylineNew YorkHurricane SandyHurricane KatrinaNew Orleans
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Interviews by the Center for Social Media returns- This Week: 'User Experience'
Angelica Das of American University’s Center for Social Media has been documenting our process from every angle- design, development, content curation, partnership building, fundraising, you name it. And while an all-encompassing report will be released summer 2013, Das is publishing blog posts on the CSM website that focus on specific moments/topics as we go along. The most recent post focuses on User Experience, and how we at LandofOpportunity are thinking about our users, and how they will interact with the material and platform. Check out this most recent update , and look out for more leading up the final (upcoming) report!
Tags: User ExperienceInteractive DesignCenter for Social Media
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"Hangout" With Luisa Dantas This Thurs, Feb. 21st
As we shift focus here at Land of Opportunity to develop our interactive online media platform, we're delving headfirst (with fingers crossed) into using cutting-edge transmedia. This week, Luisa Dantas joins a panel of media insiders for Interacting With Transmedia: An InterActs Live Google Hangout, an online roundtable hosted by NAMAC and The Daily Dot. The hangout will investigate best media practices and seek to answer the question: What is transmedia? Join Luisa and a team of innovative media artists, filmmakers, internet enthusiasts, gamers, and funders, as they explore multiple points of entry for understanding the transmedia landscape and what it means for the continued evolution of media properties. Tune in with us Thurs. Feb. 21st, from 2-3:30 pm CT, 3-4:30 pm EST by clicking here. Post questions for panelists via Twitter with hashtag #InterActs.
Panelists:
- Henry Jenkins (Moderator), USC Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism and Cinematic Arts; Author of Convergence Culture
– Nuno Bernardo, CEO & Founder, beActive Media
– Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, Executive Director, The Media Consortium
– Luisa Dantas, Director/Producer, Land of Opportunity
– Ingrid Kopp, Director of Digital Initiatives at Tribeca Film Institute
– Danielle Riendeau, Blogger for KillScreen, Professor of Interactive Storytelling at Northeastern University, Communications Officer for ACLU-NorCal
– Marc Smolowitz, Director, Producer, Executive Producer, Documentary Filmmaker
Tags: Land of OpportunityLuisa DantasNAMACThe Daily DottransmediaGoogle Hangouts
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January 10, 2013Disaster Recovery
We're attending the Road to Resilience in NYC!
Here in New Orleans, we at Land of Opportunity have been staying up to date on the recovery efforts for Hurricane Sandy, and have been communicating with mediamakers and activists working on the ground to rebuild the city. With the footage and first hand experience we have concerning post-Katrina reconstruction and the planning process that ensued and continues to this day, there are so many lessons to be learned from this documentation that we want to share and utilize with those that are the ones now in need. As a first step, we’re excited to announce our participation in Charting the Road to Resilience, a conference put on by the Municipal Art Society of New York. The Road to Resilience (a combination of both site visits to devastated areas, and presentations/break-out sessions held at the New School in Manhattan) will bring together more than 80 different partners to look at the challenges, and opportunities, of building a more resilient New York City from the ground up.
This Saturday's events include relevant discussions: what are the hard facts about the impacts of the storm? What about the recovery process has worked well? What were the challenges? Are there lessons to be learned? What are the principles to guide us in the recovery and rebuilding process?
Our Interactive Producer Laine Kaplan-Levenson will be participating in a session on Communications, Social Media & Data (along with folks from Untapped Cities, Mayor Bloomberg’s Digital Office, Sandy Storyline, and 596 Acres) to bring our New Orleans framework into the dialogue and help brainstorm what to take from this experience, and what can be done differently this time around and in the future.
This is just the beginning of our efforts to open the communication between New Orleans, New York, and all cities in crisis, to exchange resources, knowledge, and leverage the voices of those working together to create the types of cities we want to live in.
Tags: Land of OpportunityMASRoad to ResilienceHurricane SandyNew York City
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An Interview with CSM, An Institute with BAVC, and Back
After a week at BAVC’s Producer’s Institute, our heads are still spinning with all of the amazing ideas that were thrown around amongst the incredible group of people we had the privilege to meet and work with. The Conference was stimulating, exciting, powerful, stressful and even overwhelming at times. It was a roller coaster of meetings, brainstorming sessions, lectures, Panera-catered deliciousness, and final presentations on project paths and goals. Clearly, we are still processing the week! But we return from BAVC with a more specific, focused, and effective plan for designing our interactive web experience. Stay tuned…
In other recent news, Luisa was recently interviewed by Angelica Das, the Associate Director of the Center for Social Media. The piece focuses on the transition for documentary filmmakers from traditional storytelling to web-native interactive productions, with special attention paid to Mozilla’s Living Docs project. Luisa talks on her experience thus far taking the jump into non-linear interactive media, and the lessons already learned in doing so- this post by Das gives a sneak peak at what the final report (to be released by the Center in the late spring of 2013) on the Land of Opp project will feature, which will delve deep into the transparant process of the experience and include a ‘best practices’ guide sure to be valuable to all documentary filmmakers. Read the interview on our blog or the CSM website.
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Land of Opportunity Mentioned in Documentary Magazine
In the most recent publication of Documentary Magazine, Laura Almo’s article ‘A New Kind of Popcorn Movie: Documentary Filmmaking Re-Imagined for the Digital Future’ discusses collaborative and interactive online documentary storytelling. Almo reflects on Land of Opportunity partners livingdocs.org and Mozilla and describes similar projects like The Interrupters and The Tillman Story. Pick up a copy and check it out!
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BAVC Producer's Institute Features Land of Opportunity
Land Of Opportunity is off to California! This week is the Bay Area Video Coalition Producers Institute for New Media Technologies. We’re heading to San Francisco for an intensive week of workshopping our project and taking the next steps towards developing and designing our interactive web experience. If you’re in the Bay Area, don’t miss the Public Conference Day on Saturday, October 13 held at SPUR featuring numerous panels, discussions, and other fun networking opportunities. Follow us on Twitter for live updates (#pi12), and stay tuned for a post-BAVC recap! Find out more information at the BVAC website.
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Tonight: MIT's Urban Planning Film Series Screens Land of Opportunity
We’re excited to announce that our film is being screened tonight at MIT’s Urban Planning Film Series.
The Urban Planning Film Series is a mostly-weekly series showing documentary and feature films on topics related to cities, urbanism, design, community development, ecology, and other planning issues.
The film is showing at 6 p.m. tonight in MIT Room 7-429. If you’re in the Boston area, check it out! Free Admission.
Tags: land of opportunitynew orleansMIT Urban Planningfilm screeningBostonDUSP10/10/12Wednesday
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Land of Opportunity and Cowbird Co-Launch 'New Orleans' Saga
It’s been said that New Orleans will punch you in the face and then hand you a rose. And whether you've called it home, hammered nails in the Lower 9th Ward, or simply strolled down Frenchmen Street, you'll probably agree it's a city that leaves a lasting impression on your heart, soul, and liver. This month, on the 7th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, we're pleased to announce a new partnership with Cowbird, an amazing digital storytelling platform that collects stories created by people all over the world told in images, text, and sound.
After experiencing this simple and impactful tool for sharing memories and moments, we decided to team up with them to create Cowbird's first place-based Saga, New Orleans, and as of yesterday's launch serves as an official call for open and ongoing NOLA-driven story contributions. If you'd like to participate, let us know and we'll help you submit a story of your own.
We're excited to watch this saga unfold into a beautiful mosaic of stories as powerful and diverse as the city that inspired them.
Tags: New OrleansCowbirdLand of OpportunitySuckerpunch and RosesHurricane KatrinaKatrina Anniversary
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Land of Opportunity to Participate in the 2012 BAVC Producers Institute: Stories With Impact
We are thrilled to announce our acceptance in the Bay Area Video Coalition 2012 Producers Institute for New Media Technologies ! This fall, from October 12- October 19, we at LOP along with our partners will join five additional transmedia projects in the making in San Francisco for a week-long 'laboratory' connecting social issue documentary filmmakers and partner nonprofit organizations with technologists and mentors to develop techniques and story assets to propel these creative social change agendas. Our interactive web experience will be workshopped and networked by the mentors on site as well as team members of the additional projects, and guided towards a most efficient functionality and design for our tool. We are so excited to share this opportunity and strengthen connections with not only our amazing partners at the Center For Social Media and Mozilla (a partner to the Institute as well), but fellow New Day filmmakers Theo Rigby and Kristy Guevara-Flanagan, as well as form new ties with all attending the lab.
For more information about BAVC, the Producer's Institute and all accepted documentary projects, visit their website or read the press release here . Stayed tuned!
Tags: BAVCProducers Institute for New Media TechnologiesNwe Day FilmsMozillaCenter for Social MediaLand of OpportunityInteractive Web ExperienceTransmediaInteractivity
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Check out our demo!
The DEMO of our Interactive Web Video Player is live and we need your help! We would love feedback on your user experience so dive in then please take our survey and let us know what you think! As we move into the next phase of development, we will use your feedback to improve every aspect of the player from functionality to design. Your comments will also help us craft a rich and engaging user experience. Thank you in advance for your input, it will make all the difference as we see this project develop and grow!
Please forward these links to any potential advocates, educators, media-makers, and generally savvy people in your network who would be willing to test the player and provide us their feedback. If you have additional comments or ideas on how to use this web player as a tool/resource in your community, contact us or join our google group.
If you don’t know what the heck this is, read below for more info:
It’s a brave new world here at LAND OF OPPORTUNITY! We're harnessing the power of leading-edge technology to amplify the voices, stories and issues we've been capturing in New Orleans and beyond for over six years. With support from the Ford Foundation and BlackPublicMedia.org, and with help from the Mozilla Foundation, Living Docs and the Center for Social Media, we're developing an opensource interactive web video player that cues additional related multi-media content, which users can navigate, share and tailor in myriad ways. This content will be curated by community, data, educational and media partners in New Orleans and sister cities. This is a dynamic multi-layered story space designed to increase engagement and inspire action around core urban issues.
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Interactive Web Video Player
It's a brave new world here at LAND OF OPPORTUNITY! We're harnessing the power of leading-edge technology to amplify the voices, stories and issues we've been capturing for over six years. With support from the Ford Foundation's Metropolitan Opportunity Unit and Black Public Media.org and with the help of the Mozilla Foundation, the Center for Social Media and the newly created Living Docs Project, we're developing an opensource interactive web video player that cues additional related multi-media content, which users can navigate, share and tailor in myriad ways. This is a dynamic curated story space designed to increase engagement and inspire action around core urban issues: affordable housing, urban redevelopment/planning, immigration, and economic displacement.
Users will access and contribute to the stories that they need to explore their own challenges in their own communities. Footage from LAND OF OPPORTUNITY (over 1500 hours amassed in the past six years) will be supplemented with content curated by advocates, educators, data entities and other mediamakers in "sister cities". This player and the content it houses may be used for a variety of purposes: housing advocates could add content that supports an affordable housing campaign; a Latin American studies educator may wish to integrate it into a class on immigration; others still may want to feature top issues in urban planning/redevelopment. In fact, we anticipate that this player may be used for uses that we cannot even imagine now, but will be able to document as we develop and implement the project. Our process will be public to benefit other mediamakers who are working with emerging media in social issue narratives The development and documenting process will be guided by our partners at the Center for Social Media, Mozilla Foundation and others. We have a barebones demo of the player. We're looking for help with development and implementation of the player in every aspect from design and functionality to user interface. We're also looking for partners in potential sister cities who want to put this to use! Please join the conversation and give us feedback on the project!
Producer/Director Luisa Dantas will also be on a panel at SXSW Interactive, sharing the ups and downs of our development process so far, so stop by if you're there!
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Check out "Shell Shocked" this Sat., as part of the Resilience Conference in #NOLA https://t.co/HTxTld7Iy1 2 days ago
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LandofOpp featured in this article on urban studies films, by @newdayfilms http://t.co/W3Mpo9f2TA 2 days ago
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@jdshvacsvc Wow. Sounds like some major internal problems to ensue for the NY/NJ coast (to complement the existing ones!) 10 days ago
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"Detroit, America's Greatest Comeback City," new slogan for generating tourism?? http://t.co/JiFeZEtBCb 10 days ago